Primeval howls reverberated around a harrowed and transfixed court room as Oscar Pistorius tried but ultimately failed to describe the panic stricken moments that ended the life of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, and changed his life forever.

“She wasn’t breathing!” he said, or rather wailed, of the moment
he finally discovered her body, slumped on the toilet floor, before
his head crashed into his hands, and he slumped forward, emitting
long harrowing moans that called forth his lawyers, his tear-strewn
family and his psychologist, who rushed to the witness box and
moved in a flurry around him. The court was adjourned, temporarily
at first, eventually for the day, when it was clear the accused was
in no state to continue.

It has taken five and a half weeks to reach only Day 17 of the
Paralympic Champion’s murder trial. It was, by some margin, the
most dramatic and traumatic so far.

The broad outline of what Pistorius claims happened in his home
in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year is well known -
that he mistook the sound of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his
locked toilet cubicle for a potentially volatile intruder, and
fired four shots through the door, that would turn out to be
fatal.

It is a story seemingly riddled with inconsistency and
unlikelihood, but the new details that were revealed as a deeply
distressed Pistorius recounted events at great length were as
compelling to hear as they were upsetting.

Ms Steenkamp was awake, he said, when in the middle of the
night, walking on his stumps, he brought two fans in from the
balcony. They pair had just spoken.

“I heard the window opening in the bathroom,” he said. The
sliding window hit against the edge, indicating it could open no
further. “That is the moment that everything changed.”

As he spoke he was not wearing his now customary dark suit and
tie, but rather a sports top and shorts. Moments before, he had
removed his prosthetic legs, revealed his stumps to the court, and
walked briefly in a line, next to the same bathroom door, which has
been exhibited in court for more than a month now, to demonstrate
his poor balance and mobility whilst on them.

This was the man, the Blade Runner, who so memorably came flying
around the top bend of the London Olympic track and into the
history books two summers ago. Yet his legs are skinny taper,
almost to a point. He moved like a new born deer.

“I froze. I didn't know what to do,” he said, holding back
tears. “I was looking down the passage scared at the person was
going to come out. I grabbed firearm from underneath the bed. I
wanted to get back to where passage was. To get myself between the
person or people, and Reeva. I whispered for Reeva to get down. I
shouted for the people to get out. I shouted for Reeva to phone the
police.

“I made my way down the passage. I was constantly aware this
person could come at me any time. I didn't have my legs on. Then I
stopped shouting. I was worried that if I shouted the person would
know exactly where I was. That I could get shot.

“Then I heard a noise from inside the toilet that I perceived to
be somebody coming out of the toilet. Before I knew it, I had fired
four shots at the door."

"I wasn't sure where to point the firearm," he said. "My eyes
were going between the windows and the toilet. I stood for some
time.

"I just stayed where I was and kept on screaming. Then I heard a
noise from inside the toilet that I perceived to be somebody coming
out of the toilet. Before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the
door."

At this point, he said, his ears were ringing, and he couldn’t
hear anything. “I didn’t know if someone else would come in through
the window to attack Reeva and I. I called out to Reeva, but I
couldn’t hear anything.”

On returning to the pitch dark bedroom, where the blackout
curtains were closed, he wondered if Reeva was hiding, and “I ran
my hand along the length of the curtain to see if she was behind
there.”

Reeva Steenkamp’s mother June looked on, stony-faced and
transfixed, as he told the court how he hit the door with a cricket
bat, desperate to see inside.

“I screamed Help! Help! Help!,” he said. "I don't think I've
ever screamed like that. I was crying out for Reeva. I was crying
out for the Lord to help me. I didn't want to believe it could be
Reeva inside the toilet.

"I hit the door and a small piece opened. All I wanted to do was
look inside and see if it was Reeva.”

A long plank of the door came away, which Pistorius threw into
the bathroom.

“I lent over the partition. I saw the key on the floor. I
unlocked the door. I flung it open. I sat over Reeva and I cried. I
don't know how long I was there for.”

It was then that he tried to say she wasn’t breathing, but
failed, and the howling began, and the court adjourned.

If the grief and the remorse were an act, Pistorius is a talent
indeed, but grief and remorse do not necessarily intimate guilt or
innocence.

On Wednesday, the State Prosecutor Gerrie Nel is likely to begin
cross-examining Mr Pistorius, and he is likely to show no remorse
himself, in focusing on the inconsistencies in the Pistorius
account that still arguably remain. Why are his neighbours
convinced they heard a woman screaming? Why had he fired four shots
through the door “before he knew it”, and heard no sound from Reeva
to intimate she had been shot, first in the hip, and then the arm,
before the fatal headshot?

After five at times painstaking weeks, there can be no doubt
that the rather crassly dubbed ‘trial of the century’ has finally
reached the heart of the matter.